How Radical was Mary Wollstonecraft’s Political Theory?
“Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices.” Mary Wollstonecraft, an English feminist philosopher from the late 18th century, is best known for her book The Vindications: A Vindication of the Rights of Men and a Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Wollstonecraft was indeed radical in that she did not mince words in regard to what she saw as the short sidedness of her more macho peers.
The general theme of Wollstonecraft’s critique of male political theorists was focused to highlight their inability to consider a woman in terms that grant her more than simply being subordinate to man. She argues that this attitude is more likely a product of generational conditioning than maliciousness or bigotry directed toward and orchestrated against the metamorphosis of woman into a co-equal of man. Wollstonecraft also expresses a great deal of frustration in how these noble thinkers could be so blind to what she considered to be their blatant and obtuse hypocritical reasoning. Although she sometimes seems angry as she dresses them down, there also seems to be a certain plea of desperation in her words, as she shows admiration for the brilliance of thinkers like Rousseau while struggling to come to grips with their faulty presumptions.
Wollstonecraft qualifies by pointing out how easily, and by great quantities, men have arranged “many ingenious arguments… that the two sexes, in the acquirement of virtue, ought to aim at attaining a very different character.” The flaw in their reasoning, as she points out, is that they all have assumed that the two sexes are physically restrained to a particular type of virtue: “to speak explicitly, women are not allowed to have sufficient strength of mind to acquire what really deserves the name of virtue.” The tyranny of man, or more aptly man’s subconscious need to dominate, is what she blames for this attitude toward women. The assumption is that men first subjugated women by physical dominance and then falsely applied this sense of superiority to women’s other faculties as well.
Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie (c. 1797)
“Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, OUTWARD obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, everything else is needless, for at least twenty years of their lives.” Here, Wollstonecraft expresses how, at least in part, the role of women and their limit of contribution has been passed down generationally, while also acknowledging a woman’s leverage over man’s sexual appetite and inferring that a woman’s reward for her patient manipulation is to be cared for. Wollstonecraft was not the sort of woman who wanted to be cared for like a possession or trophy. Her aspirations were to have equality in moral status and to elicit respect for her mental capacity and moreover for all women.
To a greater portion she blames men for the suggestion that women are inherently “less-than” and, therefore, prime for subjugation. Wollstonecraft scorns against Milton’s synopsis of a woman’s composition by saying, “…he tells us that women are formed for softness and sweet attractive grace, I cannot comprehend his meaning, unless, in the true Mahometan strain, he meant to deprive us of souls, and insinuate that we were beings only designed by sweet attractive grace, and docile blind obedience, to gratify the senses of man when he can no longer soar on the wing of contemplation.” Clearly, she is insulted when she takes a jab at the limit of his ability of insightfulness. Her continued theme against the idea of women being submissive to men shows that she believed that men openly regarded women as such in Wollstonecraft’s day. I did not detect that she feels her male counterparts deemed women as irrational but more that they believed women to be inferior and therefore not able to reason to the same degree as men.
To Wollstonecraft it seems that men do not necessarily oppress women for sake of malice, but rather, because of a distorted view of their capacity to evolve into adults. She describes how “they try to secure the good conduct of women by attempting to keep them always in a state of childhood.” In this regard, she explains how men have foolishly assumed that women are not capable of self-determination, and with this false notion, they neglect to even allow the space for self-determination to ensue. She expands this idea in how “Rousseau was more consistent when he wished to stop the progress of reason in both sexes; for if men eat of the tree of knowledge, women will come in for a taste: but, from the imperfect cultivation which their understandings now receive, they only attain a knowledge of evil.” This is obviously a reference to the biblical story of Adam and Eve, to which she eludes that this view of sheltering women from obtaining higher states of reason goes back as far as the beginning of man, or at least to how it has been propagated by the church. Furthermore, the implication is that women cannot shoulder the burden of equity without somehow destroying the good nature of mankind. Outraged, Wollstonecraft continues, “in the works of the authors I have just alluded to… that my objection extends to the whole purport of those books, which tend, in my opinion, to degrade one half of the human species, and render women pleasing at the expense of every solid virtue.”
The world of Wollstonecraft, by her expression of anger, does not seem to be one that holds her ideas as self-evident. Given her unorthodox lifestyle and her outspoken nature and judging by how she describes the attitudes of her contemporaries, she was a very controversial figure in her day. Her work was deemed inflammatory by both sexes for various reasons. She expresses her disappointment in the following passage:
“But for this epoch we must wait—wait, perhaps, till kings and nobles, enlightened by reason, and, preferring the real dignity of man to childish state, throw off their gaudy hereditary trappings; and if then women do not resign the arbitrary power of beauty, they will prove that they have LESS mind than man. I may be accused of arrogance; still I must declare, what I firmly believe, that all the writers who have written on the subject of female education and manners, from Rousseau to Dr. Gregory, have contributed to render women more artificial, weaker characters, than they would otherwise have been; and, consequently, more useless members of society.”
She is careful to both point out the intelligence of her adversaries and the chinks in their arguments with challenging quips of her own. Most importantly, she challenges the preconceived notion that woman’s capacity for rationality is not second to man, but rather underdeveloped thanks to a system of tyranny between the sexes which has not allowed women to develop into their full potential. Wollstonecraft offers this ultimatum, “[w]omen are, therefore, to be considered either as moral beings, or so weak that they must be entirely subjected to the superior faculties of men.” She would perhaps find great solace to know that, while not perfect, the world has evolved into one that respects an ever expanding role of women in all parts of society and that, in many ways, her efforts have contributed greatly to these changes.
Bibliography
Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Vindications: A Vindication of the Rights of Men and a Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Richmond, Surrey, United Kingdom: Alma Classics, 2020.
